Chapter Fifteen
Abbi had the most comfortable bed he’d ever slept in. Not just because it beat the sagging mattress at his rental, but because of the woman who was in it, the one he kissed as they lay down together and put his arms around in the night when his dreams of fire, of screaming, threatened to swallow him whole.
He spent the night there, and then another. He knew he shouldn’t get used to it. He couldn’t afford to lose track of why he was here. If he forgot, there was always a mountain of paperwork at the nature center to remind him.
But one morning a few days later, lounging in Abbi’s backyard with her feet in his lap, sipping coffee as she pointed out the different kinds of flowers in her garden, it was enough to make him imagine his whole time here was one long summer vacation that never had to end.
Only to Abbi, this wasn’t a break. This was her life, and she lifted her legs and sat up with a sigh, saying, “I should get to work, Ty. We’ve been lying here all morning and I can’t get away with pretending I’m sick.”
“Ah, but you could tell them you’re too busy fucking.”
She screwed up her face. “I’m pretty sure everybody at work already thinks that.”
“Good,” he said. “They know you’re mine.”
He meant it to be flirty, fun, but Abbi’s smile dropped. I didn’t mean it like that, he almost said, then thought of Aidan sitting across the desk from him, steepling his fingers, asking when Tyler had last lied. He couldn’t say the words to Abbi to make her think he was talking about the fake kind of his. He couldn’t make this all sound like so much nothing, a summer fling bound to end.
She got up, kissed him on the forehead, and went to head inside, but he grabbed her around the waist, pulling her back on his lap. His calendar was counting down—four short weeks until he was gone. He didn’t want to waste a second of his time.
“No work today,” he said. “Let’s play hooky. I’ll fuck you all afternoon. We can do it in the backyard.” He paused. “Or the front.” He raised an eyebrow to see if that was the bait she needed, and she laughed and smacked his chest.
“You’re out of your mind,” she said, but she was smiling again. And he loved anything that made her smile.
He drew up her T-shirt as he kissed her. “We’ll give the neighbors a show.”
“I’m serious, Tyler,” she said, pulling her shirt back down. “I really have to go. But you can stay here and be a kept man lounging in the garden while I’m away.”
The thought of sitting around all day while Abbi worked made him laugh. “How about I do some things around here to help you out instead? I noticed the gate to the back is off its hinges. I could fix that for you.”
Abbi scrambled off his lap. “You don’t need to do that.”
“I know I don’t need to. I want to.”
“You can’t possibly want to spend your day that way.”
He followed her into the house, where he noticed the sliding screen door was off its tracks. “It’s called being nice,” he said. “Helpful. Have you heard of it? Someday you might consider letting somebody do something for you sometime.”
Abbi turned toward him, arms folded. “And you could try relaxing and not worrying about other people for a change. If you don’t have to go to the nature center, then go for a hike. Find a swimming hole. Read a book. God, if I had a day off, I’d take a nap. And when I do have a day off, I’ll take care of the gate and all the other little things that need work. It’s hard keeping up with a house when you work full time.”
“I know!” he said. “That’s why I’m offering a hand.”
“Fun, Tyler. Try it. I’ll pick you up some whiskey on my way home and we can throw a ton of food on the grill, have a relaxing night. How does that sound?”
Perfect—except for the part where he couldn’t confess that he didn’t actually want any whiskey. That it was starting to make his throat burn.
That every time he drank it he thought of Scott, and every time he thought of Scott he was reminded of what a crap friend he was, having such a good time when he didn’t deserve Abbi’s warmth.
But just when he was in the middle of coming up with some bs about how he didn’t need anything, the phone rang. Abbi held up a finger for him to wait.
“Hello?” she said, mouthing “no yard work” at him. He rolled his eyes. He’d never met someone so stubborn in his life.
Then her mouth closed and she straightened. “Did you dial 911?”
Tyler snapped to attention.
There was silence as the person on the other end talked, and then Abbi, interrupting, asked something confusing about what the person had seen.
“And this was last night?” she confirmed, waving Tyler away as he signaled for her to tell him what was going on.
“But there are pull-offs along the road where a truck could park. It’s not like it’s—yeah. Okay. No, I got it.” She ran a hand through her hair, where the blue was starting to fade to light green. She’d been talking about switching to purple. “I’m coming right in.”
She hung up the phone. Tyler pounced. “What was that about?”
“That was my boss. He said they got a bunch of calls last night and again this morning from a woman who saw someone hanging around Ridge Line Road. That’s the road that runs south along the mountain where we hiked.”
“Did something happen?” Tyler asked. “The woman who called—is she okay?”
“She’s fine, yeah. But she said it was late and there was a truck parked up there and no one in it.”
“So?”
“A white truck.”
Tyler swallowed. There were lots of white trucks in town.
But he knew what Abbi was thinking. It was the same thing that flashed through his mind.
“Did she call the police?” he asked, unease making itself right at home in the pit of his stomach.
“They said there’s nothing illegal about parking there, which is true. Same thing about walking around. That’s why she called the nature center. The police said to make sure we have a record. In case something happens later, I guess.”
“How proactive,” Tyler said dryly.
“We don’t know anything yet.”
“But?” He gave her a don’t tell me you believe that face until she relented.
“But that’s the road you take if you want to get to the firebreak site. Assuming you aren’t crazy enough to take the long way from Silver Meadows like we did.”
“There’s not a trail that goes that way,” Tyler said.
“That’s why the woman called it in. Because why would someone be walking around there late at night?”
They looked at each other in silence. Was Tyler overthinking things, looking for trouble when everything was fine?
Maybe. But he wasn’t going to leave her to find out on her own.
“I’m coming to the office with you.”
It wasn’t a question. Tyler knew she’d say no anyway.
He hoped she knew by now he wouldn’t listen.